Reader question:

Please explain “more shoes to drop” in this: “Do you think there are more shoes to drop? What do you expect to happen next?”

My comments:

This means there is probably more information to come, whatever that is, more information for us to get the full picture and hopefully help settle the matter once and for all.

“More shoes to drop” is a variation of the idiom “the other shoe to drop”.

The other shoe to drop?

Yeah, well, you see, when we go to bed, we sit on the edge of the bed, untie our shoes and drop them to the floor one by one before getting under the quilt. Now, suppose people wear heavy shoes and there’s someone living beneath their floor. That someone can hear the thump of a shoe hitting the floor overhead, pretty clearly if it comes during the dead of the night.

Now, suppose that someone is a light sleeper and also someone who hates noises during the night – it makes them unable to sleep. Then it becomes plausible that he or she, after hearing the sound of one shoe dropping to the floor, would wait for the other shoe to drop before they can go comfortably to bed.

Now, suppose that one night, the person who habitually drops his heavy shoes with a thud suddenly realizes the noise he makes. I mean, after hearing the thud the first shoe makes, he realizes what a terrible noise it must be to the person who lives below. So, gently, he removes his second shoe and puts it on the floor without making the slightly noise. Then he gets into bed and falls asleep.

Only to be wakened up by a loud knocking sound on the door.

As you may guess, it’s from the neighbor who lives below. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, he’s been staying up all night.

Did something like this actually happen?

I may have exaggerated a bit but it certainly can happen or could’ve happened.

All right, after telling a convoluted story, let’s get back to the idiom of “the other shoe”. It’s an American idiom. Figuratively speaking, the other shoe represents additional information.

In other words, there’s more to come.

In our example, “there are more shoes to drop” clearly means there is more than one piece of additional information to expect. In other words, there are more to come, inevitably, much more.

Here are media examples of the other proverbial shoe in various forms:

1. Breaking news from Agency France Presse (AFP): The G20 has just “embraced a crackdown” on tax haven-corporations and shell companies that will savagely and decisively rip away the last remaining vestiges of financial privacy here on Earth.

This is a huge change, almost incomprehensible. In a single month, from start to finish, privacy assurances that have existed for centuries are being stripped away.

Less than two weeks ago, the Panama Papers (PP) was strategically leaked and we reported, “Financial Elite’s Attack on Worldwide Privacy.” We said it was almost surely a planned leak by financial elites to bring in more worldwide capital controls.

Some people said we were just paranoid conspiracy theorists (although the hundreds of thousands who follow us regularly knew better). Then Wikileaks published evidence that George Soros (and his evil ilk) were behind the PP and the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, Bradley Birkenfeld, has stated the CIA is obviously behind the leak.

More shoes dropped, just as we predicted. The Panama Papers were indeed used to justify a global crackdown on investment anonymity. We posted about it just yesterday in, “Anatomy of a Psyop: How The Elites Justify Global Taxation.” At the time, we reported the IMF and the World Bank were pushing for aggressive pursuit of taxes around the world. Tax “cheats” were causing world poverty and would have to be stopped.

Is this all just a coincidence? Perhaps two weeks from leak, to reporting, to meetings and now to worldwide implementation of global regulatory and enforcement programs? You’d have to be drinking a lot of fluoride and turning your brain to mush watching loads of cable television programming not to see this was all pre-planned.

Unfortunately, most people actually don’t see it! They should though. This new world order is being rolled out at a lightning pace. Hard to believe how quickly they are putting the pieces into place for a worldwide matrix of total control. Even harder to believe that more are not speaking out against it.

- In Historic Move G20 Wipes Out Tax Haven Anonymity – ‘Market Integrity at Stake, DollarVigilante.com, April 16, 2016.

2. Two years ago, then-9-year-old Riley Morrison had a request for Stephen Curry. She sent the Golden State Warriors' guard a hand-written letter asking why his signature Under Armour shoes were listed on the company's online store only in boys’ sizes.

Curry, whose oldest daughter is also named Riley, was touched by the letter and sent a hand-written response, telling Morrison, “We are correcting this now!”

It didn’t take long for all of Curry's sneakers to soon be labeled in unisex sizes across both girls and boys categories on the Under Armour website. But Curry wanted to do more.

“Right after Riley wrote the letter, I started to reach out to Under Armour,” Curry told ESPN. “One, to see how we could fix the problem that she was having with her experience on the website and trying to find her size in the right section. Two, having the quick idea of saying, ‘Let’s take this another level and let Riley use her story to impact women using their voice, all across the world in whatever way they can.’”

From there, the International Women’s Day special edition of his sneaker was born.

After Morrison co-designed last year’s version, Curry partnered with 16-year-old actress Storm Reid on the theme for this year’s Curry 7. The shoe features multiple tones of purple, the official color of International Women's Day, which is Sunday.

“It’s important to uplift young women and give them a dream, confidence and a vision, showing them what they’re capable of,” Curry said. “Storm embodies that entirely with how she represents herself.”

...

For Reid, who jokes that it’s still a funny experience seeing herself on screen, seeing her #Bamazing platform come to life atop her favorite player's signature sneaker has been a unique experience.

“I’ve been holding this secret since like August of last year!” she said, with a beaming smile. “I think people will be inspired by it. Of course, they love him, and they love his shoes. To have another shoe drop is cool, but to have it be more impactful is super exciting.”

- How Stephen Curry’s International Women’s Day sneaker came to life, ESPN.com, March 7, 2020.

3. December’s revelation that U.S. government agencies and our largest corporations were subject to a hyper-sophisticated cyberattack was not unexpected, but the breadth of the SolarWinds hack was shocking.

FireEye, a world leader on cybersecurity, stated the company had never witnessed a breach of this scope and magnitude. In a blog post disclosing the attack, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia wrote, “We are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities.” It was evident just how serious the situation was.

Then the other shoe dropped. Days after the initial report disclosing the breach, we learned that the SolarWinds hack impacted thousands more entities than previously believed and is still ongoing as we speak.

Through a series of seemingly innocuous software updates, hostile actors penetrated our networks and spread undetected for months like a metastatic cancer.

We don’t yet know the full extent of what assets were compromised in SolarWinds, something that will take months or longer to assess. What is clear is very few nation-states have the cyber capabilities needed to orchestrate a hack of this sophistication, and SolarWinds bears all the hallmarks of Russian malign activity.

Malware and cyberattacks are something of a Russian specialty and remain their tools of choice because they are cheap to execute and can wreak maximum havoc.

- Op-ed: The SolarWinds hack is a blow. The U.S. must prioritize cybersecurity now, CNBC.com, February 9, 2021.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣 編輯：丹妮）